ANOTHER REASON TO BE DISGUSTED BY COCKROACHES

A shiver of horror ripples across me anytime I chance upon a cockroach in the kitchen.  It is enough to cause to me to deploy an arsenal of chemical warfare.  But why?  They aren’t thought to transmit diseases to humans, but they do contaminate food with their feces, smell bad, and are associated with asthma.  Despite their bad rap there are a few that are not household pests.  A few species of cockroaches feed on dead wood.  To pull off this feat they have to digest cellulose.  Cellulose is hard to digest which is why we humans like to eat plants with cellulose to keep our digestive tracts zipping along.  Cellulose is often referred to as fiber.  Cockroaches can’t digest cellulose on their own.  They rely upon microscopic critters that live within the cockroach’s digestive tract (aka intestinal symbionts) to break this complex molecule down.  New cockroaches get inoculated with intestinal symbionts through anal trophillaxis (ACK!).  To break that down (pun intended) anal trophillaxis is when one organism feeds from the anus of the other.  Now you understand the ACK!